


Top Model

by Carmarthen Juvenilia (Carmarthen)



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Javert Survives, Artists, Canon Era, Crack, Established Relationship, Fix-It, Fluff, M/M, Sexual Frustration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-28
Updated: 2013-04-28
Packaged: 2017-12-09 18:46:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/776776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmarthen/pseuds/Carmarthen%20Juvenilia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Valjean takes up a new hobby. Javert did not expect to have to assist, and is not at all thrilled at the situation. (AKA the one where Valjean takes up drawing and needs a male model.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Top Model

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Icarus5800](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Icarus5800/gifts).



> Thanks to sath and her pun-fu for the title, and Icarus for the prompt. I...this is very fluffy. Yes.

“ _Must_ I undress?”

Valjean looked up at Javert over the top of his easel, and said mildly, “You are the one who suggested I find something to do with myself besides read and pray.”

Javert frowned. “Well, I supposed you’d find something to occupy yourself that did not require me lying about all day with my clothes off like a ninny. I could be working.” He waved a hand at a side table, which held a rather drooping vase of flowers brought by Cosette on her last visit. “Could you not draw those?”

“You are always working,” Valjean said, ducking back behind the easel so Javert would not see his smile. “It will do you good to rest for half an hour. Anyway, I am tired of drawing flowers. Your clothes, if you please.”

Javert yanked at his cravat with what seemed to Valjean to be excessive force, flinging it across the arm of the sofa. Shortly thereafter, it was joined by his waistcoat and trousers, and then the remainder of his garments. He undressed gracelessly, although he was not actually glaring, so Valjean supposed he could not be nearly as put out as he pretended.

He folded himself onto the sofa with an equal lack of grace, one bare foot sticking off the end over the arm. Valjean quietly observed around the edge of his easel as Javert made himself somewhat comfortable, one leg drawn up as he leaned back against the pillows. Yes, he would make a much more interesting subject than a wilting rose, Valjean thought, following the lean, sinewy line of Javert’s calf up to his thigh, and then to his hipbone. He admired the breadth of shoulders, and then concealed another smile at Javert’s poorly-hidden annoyance.

“Are you comfortable?”

Javert’s left hand was flexing at his side, as if he itched to be doing something with it, and then he splayed it over his hip. “Quite,” he said, in a tone Valjean would have suspected of sarcasm, were not sarcasm very close to lying.

After a moment he picked up his hat from the table next to the sofa, turning it around and around in his hands. “Will you stop staring and get this over with?”

“You have to hold still before I can begin drawing,” Valjean said. 

Javert set the hat firmly upon his head and gave Valjean a glowering look from beneath lowered brows. “There, now I am a proper artist’s model.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“It’s artistic,” said Javert. “I saw a painting in a café last week of a young lady in nothing but—”

“Javert!”

Javert smirked at him, but at least shut his mouth and stopped moving. He was still wearing the hat, and it _should_ have looked ridiculous. Instead it managed to be rather distracting.

Valjean forced his mind back to thoughts of charcoal and paper, of the abstract lines of anatomy. He would think of Javert as an artist would, as an assortment of shapes and tones. He hesitated, charcoal barely touching the paper, as he looked between the blank expanse of paper and Javert, who had begun to drum his fingers unconsciously against his hip. Valjean had bought charcoal that morning, thinking it would be interesting to try a new medium; he was working with a larger sheet of paper than usual as well, and the sweeping strokes necessary felt unfamiliar and unnatural. He hesitantly sketched the line of Javert’s shoulder and arm, then grimaced at the stilted line of charcoal, lacking in the fluidity he had imagined.

Well, he would have to soldier on. “I expect I will need to practice more,” he said after a while, eyeing the rough—very, very rough—sketch before him critically.

Javert groaned, covering his eyes with his hand. “Perhaps you might ask Cosette to sit for you again. That dolt of a husband of hers liked that watercolor you painted last week.”

Valjean peered around the easel, smiling. “But a male figure is a different challenge.”

“I can think of more pleasant challenges for a male figure,” Javert muttered, coloring faintly.

“I will make it up to you later, I swear it.”

To that, Javert only raised an eyebrow. Valjean’s ears went hot, and he ducked behind the easel again. Truly, he had never met a man who could convey so much filth without saying a word.

The sketch would likely not be worth saving, he thought ruefully. It was not terrible in proportion, but it was overworked and stilted; he had been too careful in dragging the charcoal over the paper, and he had not used the expanse of the paper well. Too, he kept dragging his shirt-cuff against the drawing and smudging it.

Javert gave a loud, pointed sigh.

When he looked up again, Valjean found that Javert had shifted, stretching his leg out. Apparently he was no longer quite so bored.

“Javert, you’re—” Valjean waved his hand, a little wildly; the charcoal went flying across the room, skittering under a chair. He could feel the blush creeping up his neck; it was foolish, to blush at something he had seen so many times, but somehow there was something more obscene about Javert draped across the sofa in the middle of the day, in nothing but his hat, his rather impressive prick standing up hard and flushed against his belly. “You’re not supposed to—this isn’t _that kind_ of drawing.”

“I find myself unable to resist you looking at me so intently,” Javert drawled. “But if I have failed in my duty as a model, perhaps I ought to be punished.”

It was no use. Valjean gave the sketch one last despairing look, tore it off the easel, and crumpled it, before taking one quick stride over to the sofa and hauling Javert bodily to his feet. The hat rolled under the easel, but neither of them paid it any mind.

Javert was right: there were far better ways to spend the afternoon.

* * *

The next day the housekeeper, tidying the small study, found a crumpled pile of drawings shoved into a desk drawer. Certainly she was not one to stick her nose in her employer’s business, but she was a conscientious woman, and naturally enough had to be certain that Monsieur Fauchelevent meant to throw them all away.

Most were of flowers, many rather wilted; the good woman was not so conscientious about remembering to keep the vases filled with water between Madame Pontmercy’s visits, and Monsieur Fauchelevent did not notice to reprimand her, his mind being preoccupied with his good works and his garden.

But one drawing made color rise to her cheeks and her hand press against her breast: it was a rough charcoal sketch, crudely outlined without even a face sketched in, of one of those rude Roman statues she had heard they kept at the Louvre. Nicely formed, she had to admit, and it was good that Monsieur Fauchelevent was getting out a little, of course—but surely there were more respectable subjects to draw.

And some joker had set a top hat on the statue’s head! Probably some silly student with no respect for art, if such things could really be called art, a question on which she was not resolved. Well, no wonder Monsieur Fauchelevent had thrown it out. It wasn’t half as nice as the lovely little drawing he’d made last week of Madame Pontmercy. That was a proper drawing, that was: he’d even colored it in with a little watercolor. Not like this rough scribble of a naked statue.

She crumpled up the paper with the others and tossed them all into the fire, then merrily continued with her dusting.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Life Drawing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/783697) by [drcalvin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/drcalvin/pseuds/drcalvin)




End file.
